The economic policy of Roosevelt's New Deal stays in sharp contrast to the course followed by European policy since 2009. At first, Roosevelt focussed on fighting the desperate feelings of people and the generally pessimistic mood of the public, on strictly regulating the financial sector and on...

This paper argues that the direct job-creation strategy adopted by the New Deal administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in programs like the WPA (the “New Deal strategy”) is best understood as an effort to secure what the New Dealers came to regard as a human rights entitlement—the right...

A wide literature in the sociology of agriculture has depicted the development of agricultural experiment stations at land grant colleges as part of a development project to improve agricultural productivity in particular commodities. Some experiment stations developed regional agricultural...

This paper considers the impact of New Deal programs on the economy of the American South. Through investments in infrastructure (roads and electric power), environmental improvements (reforestation and soil conservation), and advances in public health (sanitation facilities and disease...

The article elaborates upon the reasons of institutional default (Part 1) and, in turn, upon the implications of economic default in Europe (Part 2). In relation to the reasons of institutional default, the paper cast light on three broadly interrelating elements: First, the conceptual issue...

The goal of this paper is twofold: First, to develop an estimable model of legislative politics in the US Congress, second, to provide a greater understanding of the objectives behind the New Deal. In the theoretical model, the distribution of federal funds across regions of the country is the...

We treat the direct reduction loan contract as an instance of financial innovation and describe its adoption within the building and loan (B&L) industry beginning in the 1880s and culminating in the 1930s. A long chain of complementary innovations at B&Ls gradually reduced the costs of adoption,...

This article identifies and explores means of meeting political and strategic challenges to the enactment of a federal job creation program sufficiently large and well-targeted to cope with mass unemployment. The challenges include: anti-government ideology; perceived failure of the Obama...

Unemployment brings economic, psychological, and social hardship to individuals and their community. Common policies to combat unemployment include the promotion of economic growth and training, but a less common policy focuses on the right to work. This policy proposal decouples the goals of...